Текст книги "Frost Burned"

Автор книги: Patricia Briggs

Соавторы: Patricia Briggs
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“I heard someone”—Coyote—“say that change is neither good nor bad,” I told him.

Behind me, Adam made a wolfish noise that meant disagreement.“The older you are, the more you fear change, even if you think you are in charge.Especially if you think you are in charge. There are a lot of very old fae.”

Zee inclined his head to Adam in a move that looked a lot more royal in his own shape than it did when he’d done it while wearing his human-seeming. “As you say. I would tell you that there is nothing to worry about except that there is. There are a lot of fae who hate the humans, Mercy. Some fae hate them for the iron encircling the world, some hate them for the loss of the old Underhill even though we have replaced it, and some hate humans for their ease of procreation.” He sighed and looked old. “Hatred is not a useful thing.”

“To hear you saythat—that is a thing I never thought to hear no matter how old I became.” Asil laughed and Zee raised an imperial eyebrow and someone who didn’t know him might not have seen the wry humor in his eyes.

“Not useful,” Zee said, then looked as though he was listening to something, though my ears didn’t pick up anything strange. “But it is powerful. Someone is knocking at my door, I must return.” He put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Stay safe.”

“And you,” Tad said.

And Zee walked through the blackness that filled the mirror’s frame as though it were just another doorway. He said something that I heard with my bones and not my ears, and the frame was filled with a mirror once more.

“That is one I thought would never change,” said Asil thoughtfully.

“He loved my mother,” Tad told him. “Love is more powerful than anything, even an old grumpy fae who knows how to hate.”

Asil gave Tad a thoughtful look.“Indeed?” And then he looked back at the mirror. “Love is both useful and powerful—but seldom convenient.”

“I don’t know about that,” Adam said. “I’ve found it pretty convenient.”

“That’s not what you told me,” I corrected him, and he laughed.

The ghost tried to give me trouble again on the way back down the stairway from Zee’s mirror room. But I wasn’t stoned by fae magic this time.

“Go away,” I told her.

“Mercy?” Adam was just behind me, and he put his hand on my back.

“Not you,” I told him. “It’s the ghost.” He growled, and it made me smile.

Proving that she could do something other than cry, the ghost screamed at me, her face all but pressed to mine. No one else reacted. It was really ear-piercing, so someone would have reacted if they could hear it. It was just another one of those things that only I could perceive—lucky me.

For a long time I’d thought that was the only thing I could do with ghosts—observe them. Then I’d met a vampire who could steal the power of those he consumed. He’d taken the power of a walker like me, and he’d been able to do more.

I focused my attention on the ghost, borrowed a little Alpha from Adam, though I didn’t really need it, and said again,“Go away.”

She disappeared abruptly, and there was a crash somewhere below. I heard Tad, who’d preceded us, run down the stairs to the main level. Asil, like a lot of the older werewolves, didn’t make any noise when he ran.

When Adam and I got down there, Tad was sweeping up glass in the kitchen while Asil watched. It looked as though the ghost had managed to dump all the dishes that had been in the drainer by the sink onto the floor.

Tad looked at me as he dumped the shards in the garbage.“I thought you said all that she did was cry?”

“I think,” I told him apologetically, “that when I walked through the ghost without my usual mulishness, although she didn’t quite manage to take me over, she did succeed in pulling herself a little closer to this world. She’s probably going to be a little more of a presence here until the effect wears off.”

“We have a ghost.”

“I told you that already,” I said.

“Cool.” He set the dustpan on the counter and grinned at me. “Haunted houses are nifty.”

“Tell me that when she keeps you up all night with her sobbing,” I told him. “But if she gets too obstreperous, just let me know. I might be able to make her leave you alone.” I hadn’t done a lot of experimentation on that front. Ghosts had so little self-determination—bound as they were by the rules of their existence—taking any control away from them seemed like a crime. As long as they didn’t try to possess me or bother my friends, they were safe from me.

“‘Obstreperous,’ huh,” said Tad. “I see you’ve been using that Big Word of the Day calendar I got you last Christmas.”

“That is irrefragable,” I told him solemnly.

Silverless, de-magicked, and vowing never to play word one-upmanship—or even Scrabble for that matter—with either Adam or Asil (What exactly was a quicquidlibet, anyway?), I drove to Kyle’s, where we would meet with the Cantrip agent and everyone else.

Adam only raised his eyebrows when I told him I would drive—which meant he was really exhausted. He closed his eyes as soon as I got the car on the road, and no one said much on the trip. Probably, with two dominant wolves who weren’t in the same pack, it was just as well.

Marsilia’s car was parked in Kyle’s driveway. I had to park the Corolla a block away because there were a lot of cars on the street—including a short bus that was covered with quotes from the Bible—mostly from Romans, but there were a few Revelation quotes and a lot of Proverbs. Most of them I recognized, but the chapter and verse were helpfully spelled out on each just in case. When I paused to read, Adam gave a quiet laugh.

“Elizaveta,” he told me. “I told her we had the whole pack to transport, and she showed up with a couple of vans and that. She said that one of her nephews borrowed it from his church. He told them that he needed to move some things. They left it here for us to use until we get everyone all sorted out.”

“It’s a good thing that Kyle’s old neighbor is dead,” I told him. Adam hadn’t called me; he’d called the witch who hadn’t even bothered to answer my phone call. “Every time I parked my poor old Rabbit in front of Kyle’s house, Kyle got a letter of complaint taped to his door. I can’t imagine what he’d have done in response to this bus.”

“Hey,” Adam said, quietly into my ear. “I called you first, but your phone was dead.Then I called Elizaveta.”

It shouldn’t have made me feel better. Elizaveta was more useful; heshould have called her first. She could destroy evidence and had minions who could borrow vans. But he’d called me first instead. Impatient with myself for having been so jealous about something so stupid, I looked around for a distraction, and my eyes found the bus again.

“‘Thou shall not suffer a witch to live,’” I told him, pointing at the front quarter panel. “I wonder if Elizaveta saw that. It doesn’t say werewolves, but I expect it is implied.”

“‘Wives, be subject to your husbands,’” Adam deadpanned without looking at the bus. “‘Let your women keep silence in the churches.’”

“Ah, Paul. He has so many useful things to say. ‘It is well for a man not to touch a woman,’” I replied sagely, and Adam laughed and kissed me.

I stiffened, irrationally worried that Zee might not have gotten all the silver, but Adam made a sound closer to a purr than a growl. So I relaxed and participated.

“Do they always flirt with biblical quotes?” Asil asked Tad.

In long-suffering tones, Tad said,“They can flirt with the periodic table or a restaurant menu. We’ve learned to live with it. Get a room, you guys.”

“Quiet, pup,” said Adam with mock sternness. He gave my butt a promissory pat as he said, “Respect your elders.”

At Kyle’s house, I took time to take a better look at the dent in Marsilia’s car. It wasn’t as bad as I remembered it, but it was bad enough. She was going to be furious, and I couldn’t blame her. I just hoped she kept it between us and didn’t try to involve the pack—the pack had sustained about as much damage as it could handle right now.

“Don’t worry,” Adam said. “We’ll get it fixed.”

“It can’t make her hate me any more than she already does,” I said, willing to look on the bright side.

“It might make her hate you moreimmediately,” offered Tad, and I laughed even though he was right.

“She won’t hurt Mercy,” said Adam softly. “She knows better than that.”

Asil trailed past the trunk, nostrils flaring.“The dead woman is still in the car.” He glanced around as if he was looking for something. “Armstrong’s rental is gone. He said he had some more coordinating to do with his people. He’ll be back, though. Sooner rather than later.”

“Tell me about him,” said Adam. “I only had time to shake hands and go.”

“I’m not your wolf,” warned Asil, his voice suddenly harsh.

Adam took in a breath of air and shook out his shoulders.“Sorry,” he said, looking at the car and not the other wolf. “Habit. We need to get ourselves ironed out before there’s bloodshed. You’ve been very courteous, and I thank you for it. I’ll try to do better. Would you share what you know about the Cantrip agent with me?”

There was a pause, and I kept my eyes on Asil, watching for a sign that he’d decided not to take Adam’s apology. His eyes were yellow—that they’d shift back and forth so easily told me as much as his earlier warning had about how little control he had over his wolf.

“Charles vouches for him,” Asil said at last, letting the apology lie—which was the safest way to play it. “Lin Armstrong is a troubleshooter for Cantrip and has the power to make things happen. Charles told me to tell you that he can be trusted. As long as we’re following our own rules, he won’t rock the boat.”

“Even with the blood of Cantrip agents hot on my hands?” asked Adam softly.

“Tell him the whole truth,” I said impulsively. “Better yet, wait and catch Tony when he comes with Sylvia and tell the whole herd. We’re in the right here, and they are the ones who benefit from lies.”

“Talk to the lawyer first since you have one immediately available to you,” cautioned Asil. “Then give the others as much truth as the lawyer tells you to, and not one word more.”

“If you do that, we’ll need time to get the story straight,” I said.

“We’ll tell him the truth,” Adam said heavily. “I’m tired of playing games. Maybe it’s time to spread a little fear. If they had been a little more afraid of us, Peter would still be alive.”

Adam opened the front door, and we were hit with a wave of noise and motion that only got louder when people realized who was at the door.

“Quiet,” said Adam—and everyone—the wolves, security personnel, and what looked like two dozen little girls (though I knew that there really weren’t that many, they just moved fast) shut up and stood still.

“Good.” He looked around. “Where is Kyle? I need to talk to him and get y’all organized.” He was tired if he was drifting back into Southernisms.

“I’ll get him,” said Mary Jo’s voice in the back of the crowd. I caught a glimpse of her before she disappeared up the stairs. She was dressed in sweats that were too big for her, and her skin tone was greenish, like she’d just woken up after spending the night at an all-you-can-drink orgy.

Jesse, with the littlest Sandoval on her hip and her hair mussed and damp, waded through the crowd and kissed her dad on the cheek. She rested against him for a moment.“Welcome home, Dad.”

He hugged her hard, then relaxed his hold to ruffle Maia’s hair.

Maia said,“I rode in a car with a dead body.”

Adam gave me a laughing glance.“I guess we might as well tell everyone the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“It’s a secret,” Maia explained.

He ruffled her hair again.“Yes. But not a secret from your mom. You shouldn’t keep those.”

“I tell Mam? everything.”

“Good for you.”

“So,” Jesse said, backing up a step, “I hear that you managed to survive without Mercy to rescue you this time.”

He smiled.“Brat. Remember who’s paying for your college.”

She grinned at him.“Maybe I’ll just get pregnant and work at fast food for the rest of my life.” She turned and trotted off the way she had come before he could formulate a reply.

Amid laughter that had as much to do with relief we were safe as with Jesse’s humor, Adam went to work ordering the chaos. I waited for a while, watched various members of the pack come and go. They needed to check and make sure he was still okay, and I understood exactly how they felt.

When he and Asil disappeared together to take care of the who-was-the-biggest-baddest-wolf issue, I slipped away to the kitchen to look for food for Adam—werewolves need to eat, and from the looks of him, wherever they’d held him, they hadn’t fed him at all.

Kyle’s kitchen was a mess. Dirty dishes everywhere and one whole counter was covered with trays of sandwiches that looked as though someone had called out a caterer at some point. I took a few minutes to unload clean dishes from the dishwasher and start the next batch running—dominance displays take a little time. Then I snitched a heavy-duty paper plate from a stack on the counter and loaded it with four sandwiches thick with near-bloody roast beef.

When I emerged from the kitchen, Adam was the only werewolf in sight, and the total volume of the noise in the house had dropped an appreciable amount. He was trying to push his security team gently out the door.

“We don’t think that the house is secured. And with all due respect, Mr. Brooks hired us.”

I had never met Jim Gutstein, but I recognized his voice from several phone conversations. He was in his fifties and still in the kind of shape primarily limited to professional athletes and werewolves. His dark gray eyes and jutting chin proclaimed his resistance to leaving despite the tiredness even I, who did not know him, could see. Exhaustion, I knew, only made stubborn people more stubborn.

“Here,” I told Adam, before he could say something that put Jim’s back up even further than it already was. I had experience dealing with dominant personalities, most of them werewolves. A human had no chance. I put the plate in Adam’s hand. “You eat this.”

I turned to Adam’s man. “Jim, I’m Adam’s wife, Mercy. It’s very good to meet you.” I opened the door and stepped into him, forcing him to back out the doorway. He’d have had to get more physical with me than he was comfortable with to stop me. The rest of his team followed me out.

“Thank you,” I told him sincerely. “Go home so Adam will sit down and eat. He’s fine, he’s grateful, and he’ll talk to you on Monday. Leave a couple of people here, and he’ll never know—but you, Jim, need to sleep.”

Jim Gutstein frowned at me, but another one of the men put a hand on his shoulder.“She makes more sense than you do right now, Gutstein. Sleep. Then you can give him hell. Chris and Todd have the house covered, and it is chock-full of werewolves. You heard the boss man, the likelihood of another mass attack is slim to none.”

“Good night,” I said, while they were still talking. I went back into the house and shut the door before Jim could bull or argue his way back in.

Adam was alone in the foyer, holding his plate and looking at me with a bemused expression on his face. I decided I was on a roll and pointed toward the kitchen.

“You need to go eat that right now, mister,” I said.

He laughed, and I could see again how tired he was.“Yes, Madame Alpha Coyote, I do. Would you join me? I think everyone else will keep for now.”

He meant for more than food. Only a blind woman could miss it. It was a gentle invitation, and I could pretend not to see, could escort him into the kitchen and get started on the dishes while he ate.

“This is a big house,” I said, instead. “But there is a pack of werewolves lurking somewhere as well as your daughter, her boyfriend, a police officer, a federal agent coming back shortly, and a pack of Sandoval girls. I’m not sure there’s a spare space anywhere.”

Adam smiled, and I was glad I hadn’t just taken him to the kitchen. “Leave that to me.”

We ended up sneaking out to the garage and up a rope ladder into the attic space above. Sunlight illuminated the room from a pair of skylights. The walls were finished and painted a light teal that complemented the dense cobalt carpet, but there were no lights or furniture.

“How did you know this was here?” I asked. I pulled up the rope ladder and pulled the trapdoor up until it latched. No sense giving obvious clues about where we were if we were going to sneak off alone.

Adam set his plate down on the floor.

“Warren. He said he and Kyle could keep everyone out of their bedroom, but that stealth might work better for us.”

He looked at me and his warm brown eyes had a touch of gold and his voice was a little hoarse.“Let me see your skin, Mercy. I need to know you are okay.”

I stripped, feeling a little self-conscious. I didn’t mind being naked, but a woman likes to be pretty for her mate and I was covered with bruises, cuts, and bumps. My bad knee was swollen and probably purple to boot. At least my lips weren’t silver anymore.

I didn’t cover myself up, but I turned my back to him as I slid Kyle’s sweats down my legs.

“Mercy,” he said.

“Yes?” I glanced back at him to see that he was pulling off his shirt.

“A bargain for us,” he said. “I will not hide from you if you don’t hide from me.”

The idea of Adam’s hiding from anything left my mouth open while he made short work of the rest of his clothes, so I had to hurry to catch up. He was right. I didn’t feel quite so naked when he was naked, too. He didn’t say anything, just touched my bruises with light fingers.

When he paused at my cheek, I said,“That was the car wreck.” He frowned at me. “Okay. The car wreck and then it hit the ground when the fae assassin jumped on my back.”

We went on like that. Him touching a cut, a bruise, a bump, and I’d tell him what happened.

When he was finished, he put his forehead on my shoulder and pulled me hard against him.“You’ll be the death of me,” he told me. “I could wish you less bold, less brave—less driven by right and wrong.”

“Too bad for you,” I commiserated. “I know it’s rough. My husband tried to kill himself to save the pack, you know. And earlier today, he faced down a fae he knew nothing about—and some of the fae are forces of nature.”

“My wife was going to fight him,” explained Adam. “I had to protect him from that.”

I laughed.

“You know what Jesse’s mother would have done if the feds came and took the pack while she was my wife?” he asked.

“Filed for divorce,” I hypothesized.

It was his turn to laugh.“Point to you. And then she would go to everyone she knew and tell them how awful her life was, how people expected too much of her. Do you know what my second wife did?”

“Got beaten up and ran in circles mostly while you rescued yourself,” I told him.

“She cared for the pack that was left,” he said. “She got my child to safety. She got word to Bran—who sent help. She stepped between my child and those who would harm her.”

I snorted.“Sounds like a paragon.”

“She saved my life and gave me strength to save the rest of the pack.” He heaved a sigh and pulled back so he could look at me. “And I have this urge to turn you over my knee and bruise your butt so that you do exactly what my first wife did.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.“You ever lay a hand on me and you better never go to sleep again.”

He laughed, sat down on the carpeted floor more as though he just couldn’t stand up anymore than as if he’d actually made the decision to sit, and laughed some more. He was very, very tired—but he had just threatened to spank me, so he got no sympathy from me. I folded my arms.

He wiped his eyes with his thumb and looked up at me. His laughter had died altogether.“You don’t know how fragile you are, Mercy. The last time we got into trouble, you spent months in a wheelchair. You fight as long and as hard as any werewolf, without any of the weapons we’ve been given. You are smart. You are careful. And you’ve been very, very lucky. And that scares me more than any spriggand carrying one of Zee’s swords or a Cantrip zealot armed with silver. Luck runs out.”

“I tell you what,” I said, sitting beside him and biting down the urge to feed him the line he’d given me: did you think I’d die of old age? I hadn’t found it funny at the time and didn’t think that he would, either. “Think of me as Coyote’s daughter, if that helps you. Coyote is lucky.”

Adam shook his head.“No, Mercy. Coyote isn’t lucky. Coyote is rash, and everyone around him dies—including him. But when the sun rises, he’s all better and he goes out to look for new friends. Because Coyote is immortal.”And you are not. He didn’t say it, but we both heard it.

I tapped on the floor and then leaned forward. Time for a distraction.“This coyote is all better right now. Are you and I going to be friends, wolf?”

He canted his head and touched my chin with his hand.“I don’t know. Are you going to keep doing your best to get yourself killed?”

It hadn’t been I who had been trying to commit suicide—I hadn’t realized I was still mad at him about that. I turned my head and nipped his finger. I’d meant it as chastisement, but he didn’t take it that way. Gold lit his eyes with fire, and he left his finger where it was.

“I guess so,” he said, sounding resigned, but his lips were soft on mine.

Both of us dozed a bit afterward, not really asleep but too content to get up. I buried my nose under his ear, where his scent could wrap around me. I licked tenderly at the warm skin of his neck.

“Peter is dead,” he told me suddenly.

I put my weight on his chest, so he wouldn’t feel so alone. “Yes.”

“It was my job to protect him.”

“The average werewolf lives ten years after he is changed,” I reminded Adam. “A human has seventy years or so upon the earth before his time is done. Peter was older than that, four times older than you are. His was not a short life, and his death was quick.” It wasn’t enough, and I knew it. But it would count for something later, when his death wasn’t so

near.

“My fault,” Adam said. Someone who didn’t know him would have thought his voice was calm. “There were not so many of them. If I had attacked them when they came to take the pack

”

“You thought they were feds,” I said. He knew all of this, but if he needed to have me say it again, then I would. “If werewolves start killing federal agents, soon there won’t be any werewolves. It was the right thing to do. I was there when Peter was killed, and it could have been any oneof you. Jones had decided to kill someone, and nothing would have stopped him.”

“Jones is dead.” But his body was relaxing underneath me. Adam wasn’t stupid. This wasn’t the first time bad things happened that he couldn’t control.

“I’m not surprised.”

He huffed a laugh.“I didn’t kill him.”

I lifted my head so I could see his face.“That does surprise me.”

“I killed the rest of them and let Honey kill Jones.” He watched my face closely. He’d hidden what he was from his first wife, who had been entirely human, and she’d still run away from what little she’d glimpsed.

“Good,” I said. “That way, I won’t have to.”

He laughed again, and his body softened as much as it ever did—there just wasn’t much soft about Adam. “I love you,” he said.

“I know,” I told him seriously. “How could you help it?”

He laughed again and rolled over until I was on the bottom, and flexed his hips against mine.“I tried,” he whispered in my ear. “But it didn’t work.”

I breathed into his ear for the pleasure of feeling him shiver against me.“Of course not.” He smelled like home, like safety, like love. “Of course not.”

“I promise I won’t spank you,” he told me, his voice rough and low as he added, “not unless you ask me to.”

I let him feel my laugh against his shoulder.“That’s because you aren’t genuinely suicidal.”

We loved again then, the short nap of the rug soft under my skin and the warmth of him surrounding me.

Afterward, he fell asleep while he was eating, between one bite and the next, like a toddler. I don’t think that he had slept since the pack was taken. He didn’t even stir when I pulled away from him to go put my clothes on.

The room might have been finished, but it was not heated. Adam was a werewolf, which meant the colder the better for him—not so for me. Fully clothed, I sat down next to him to watch over him while he slept.

The quiet time didn’t last.

The door between house and garage opened no more than twenty minutes after Adam dropped off. Warren called,“Sorry, boss. You’re needed if you don’t want Kyle to shoot the rest of the pack.”

He didn’t speak that loudly, but Adam’s eyes opened up anyway. He smiled at me, and said, “Good to know. Tell Kyle to hold up, and I’ll be right down.”

Warren steadied the rope ladder when Adam tossed it out of the trapdoor.“We’ve put the pack downstairs in the big room to create some space apart from the Sandoval girls.” The big room was the largest room in the house, and it had a pool table and a stairway leading to an outside door into the backyard. Kyle’s house was bigger than ours, but not set up for groups of people quite this large.

“They wouldn’t do anything on purpose,” Warren said, as I climbed down the rope ladder behind Adam. “But we’re all on edge.”

“Silver-sick doesn’t help,” I said. “Tad can help with the silver.”

“And then we’ll send most of them to their own homes,” said Adam. “Even if our enemy has teeth left, it will take them a while to regroup. For the short term, we should all be safe enough.”

Warren grunted, and, with my feet safely down on the cement floor, I took a good look at him. Warren was my first friend in Adam’s pack—he’d been my friend before he’d joined the pack.

“You look better than I expected you to,” I said, and, to my surprise, he flushed.

“Food,” he said with a shy smile.

Adam snorted.“Kyle.”

“Well, yes,” agreed Warren, then his eyes went cold as he tossed the rope ladder back up into the hole in the ceiling. “Mercy, next time you see our favorite bloodsucker, you tell him I owe him one.”

“I’ll tell him, but he did it for Kyle.”

Warren nodded and hopped on top of the metal shelving that lined the wall so he could close the trapdoor properly.

There were no digs, humorous comments, or even sly looks when Adam, Tad, and I joined the pack in the great room in the basement. I took that as a sign of how bad everyone was feeling.

Some of the wolves were notable by their absence.

“Darryl and Auriele went to their home,” Warren told us. He glanced at Adam. “They seemed mostly recovered from the silver, and he is supposed to participate in a conference call with some Chinese scientists on Sunday.”

“All the most dominant wolves seem to be pretty well clean of silver,” Tad said.

“He told us it’s because you used your mate bond to pull the silver out of Adam, and through Adam, the pack,” said Honey. She was sitting on the pool table with her legs crossed underneath her. She was pale, and her mouth was tight, but other than that she looked mostly like herself. “I didn’t believe him until Kyle showed us the silver on the floor.” She frowned at me. “What kind of freak are you?”

Any other time, I’d have said something cutting. I felt Adam stiffen beside me, and I put my hand on his arm to forestall whatever he wanted to say. Honey had never liked me much—and since I had forced the pack to take a new look at their hierarchy, particularly the way women’s ranks were awarded, she’d liked me even less.

Honey was as dominant as Peter had been submissive, and a female wolf is supposed to take her rank from her mate. Shewanted the role she’d been assigned as his mate rather than the one that should have been rightfully hers as a dominant wolf. She didn’t want to be who she was; she wanted to be delicate and ladylike and feminine. She resented me for challenging that.

I wasn’t afraid of her. She wasn’t the type to take her dislike to the next level and try to kill me. Normally, I’d have given her as good as I got, but she’d just lost Peter. We all had just lost Peter.

“I am Adam’s freak,” I told her. “Get over it.”

“Kelly,” Adam said, ignoring Honey altogether. “Come here.”

I didn’t know Kelly well; I’m not sure anyone did. He was a big, quiet man who worked at a local yard and garden store. He usually had an air of vitality, but now half crept, half stumbled to Adam.

Warren grabbed a chair that another wolf vacated without being asked and set it down next to Tad. He pulled Kelly onto the chair and stepped behind him. He reached across the big man’s chest and grabbed Kelly’s opposite wrist and pulled it tight as he trapped Kelly’s free arm, too.

“This might hurt,” Tad said.

“Will hurt,” I told Kelly. “But I survived it.”

Kelly’s eyes went gold, and he showed me his teeth. “Coyote.”

There were still some wolves who resented having a coyote in the pack.

I smiled toothily back at him.

“Coyotes are tough,” he said. Apparently he wasn’t one of the coyote-haters. Good to know.

“So are wolves,” I told him.

“And both of you talk too much,” Tad said. “Brace yourself.”

He didn’t put his hand on Kelly’s face—which was smart. Even in human form, werewolves have strong jaw muscles. He touched his forearm, just above where Warren held it. Tad’s eyes drooped to half-mast, and his nostrils flared and power burst into being where there had been none a moment before.

The scent of fae magic seared my sinuses; Kelly roared, and his whole body arched off the chair. Adam dove to help hold him and so did Honey, who grabbed both of Kelly’s legs in her arms.

Tad jerked back—and there was a popping noise when his hand came away from Kelly’s arm.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

Kelly went limp.

“Did you get the silver out?” asked Adam, releasing his hold cautiously, but the werewolf didn’t move.

Honey dropped Kelly’s legs like they were hot and scooted away until she reached the pool table. Warren let go as well.

Tad showed him a scant handful of whitish gray powder.

Adam smiled.“Good. Kelly?”

The big man shook out his shoulders, took in a breath, and let it out.“I’m good.” He glanced at me. “Thanks for the warning.”

“No trouble,” I said. “Mine took longer.”

He leaned his head to the side without smiling.“Coyotesare tough. Good to know.”